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http://www.businessinsider.com/elysium-like-exoskeletons-exist-2013-8Scientists Are Totally Building An Elysium-Like Exoskeletonhttp://www.businessinsider.com/elysium-like-exoskeletons-exist-2013-8
Sat, 10 Aug 2013 14:32:21 -0400Jillian Scharr
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/52055c79eab8ea1c66000003-480-/damon-cantillo-elysium.jpg" border="0" alt="damon cantillo elysium" width="480" /></p><p>In the upcoming movie "Elysium," starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, the main character, Max (Damon), has fallen ill, and in his weakened state, he is unable to get to the space station Elysium where he could be cured.</p>
<p>To help, the other characters put Max in an exoskeleton, a sort of automated body armor that augments his strength and speed, also helping him to move as his illness becomes ever-more debilitating.</p>
<p>That isn't too different from how real-life exoskeletons work, experts say.</p>
<p>In fact, the exoskeleton in "Elysium" was at least partially modeled after the HULC, or Human Universal Load Carrier, an exosuit designed by Ekso Bionics and Lockheed Martin for military use. [<a href="http://www.space.com/22287-elysium-space-station-science-nasa.html">Space Station Science: Could Humanity Really Build 'Elysium'?</a>]</p>
<p>The HULC consists of leg braces and a back brace with motors at the knees and hips. It's designed to let wearers carry up to 200 pounds of extra weight on their backs, and to redirect the force of all of that weight into the ground.</p>
<p>Scanners in the HULC monitor the wearer's movements so that the <a href="http://www.livescience.com/12954-bionic-humans-artificial-limbs-technologies.html">device compliments the wearer's actions</a>. For example, each time the wearer takes a step the HULC's leg motors have to move fast enough that they don't impede the wearer's stride. But if the suit moves too fast, it could overextend the wearer's limbs and cause serious damage.</p>
<p>However, the exoskeleton in "Elysium" differs from the HULC in important ways. For one, the HULC doesn't include arm braces. And according to Nathan Harding, co-founder and CEO of Ekso Bionics, the "Elysium" exoskeleton appears to be working in a way that more closely resembles a medical exoskeleton than a military one.</p>
<p>"With a military exoskeleton, you're <a href="http://www.space.com/12145-space-android-eurobot-astronaut.html">trying to carry external loads</a>, trying to help people do things" that a normal human wouldn't be capable of doing.</p>
<p>Medical exoskeletons, by contrast, are designed to help people with muscular impairments, such as paraplegia, to <a href="http://www.livescience.com/14245-paralyzed-man-spinal-cord-injury-walks-electrical-stimulation-therapy.html">regain some of their mobility</a>. In those cases, the device does not augment a person's muscles, but instead compensates for them or even replaces them entirely in some cases.</p>
<p>That's not to say the two technologies should not be mixed; Ekso Bionics is currently developing exoskeletons for people who can move only one side of their bodies, such as stroke survivors.</p>
<p>In these types of suits, one side would be more military-like, in that it would augment the user's existing functionality, while the other side would be medical.</p>
<p><strong>Drill, baby, drill?</strong></p>
<p>"Elysium" diverges from modern exoskeleton technology in another, even more significant way.</p>
<p>"They seem to be installing [the exoskeleton] into his bone structure," Harding told LiveScience, after watching the trailer for "Elysium," which hits theaters this Friday (Aug. 9).</p>
<p>In the film, Max undergoes an operation in which parts of the exoskeleton, including <a href="http://www.livescience.com/37944-how-the-human-computer-interface-works-infographics.html">some type of brain-machine connection</a>, are drilled into his body.</p>
<p>"That's kind of a different approach than is currently going on in an exoskeleton," said Harding.</p>
<p>"Different" is putting it mildly. Aside from the bodily injury and risk of infection that such an operation would entail, drilling into a human body to affix an exoskeleton would go against what the exoskeleton is there to accomplish, Harding said.</p>
<p>Exoskeletons "are designed to provide an alternative that &hellip; basically takes the load off the infrastructure of humans," he said. Attaching exoskeletons directly to people's skeletons, he explained, would ensure that any weight they carried remained on their bodies, thus decreasing the device's usefulness.</p>
<p>"Elysium" gives one reason for its surgically implanted exoskeleton, explaining that the device interfaces with the wearer's brain. "Hook <a href="http://www.livescience.com/22665-nervous-system.html">this into your nervous system</a>, and it'll make you strong as a droid," says one character, as he prepares to operate on Max.</p>
<p>But human-computer interfaces are a whole other matter entirely. From a purely structural perspective, surgically installed exoskeletons are "intriguing, but I don't see that part of it being useful," Harding said.</p>
<p><strong>Science fiction and science reality</strong></p>
<p>Nowadays, it's fairly common to see something like an exosuit in a movie, even if the characters call it something else.</p>
<p>The "Iron Man" movies, "Battleship" and "Avatar" have also featured exoskeletons, and these movies have educated the public on what exoskeletons are and what they do, Harding said.</p>
<p>"When we started in 2005 &hellip; people just really didn't know what [exoskeletons] were or what they were doing," Harding said. "And then we went through this phase where everyone under 25 knew what an exoskeleton was because they were seeing them in all these movies. And now we've hit this phase where there are people in investment saying, 'Hey, I've got to have a bionic strategy!'"</p>
<p>Ekso Bionics isn't the only "bionic strategy" out there. A company called Activelink is <a href="http://www.livescience.com/34381-researchers-developing-power-loader-power-amplification-exoskeleton-robot.html">developing an exoskeleton called Power Loader</a>, a modified version of which will be used in the cleanup around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which melted down after an earthquake in 2011.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.space.com/18038-nasa-exoskeleton-boosts-astronauts-and-paraplegic-patients.html">NASA is also working on an exoskeleton</a> that will help astronauts walk and control their movements in low-gravity environments. That suit, co-developed with the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, may also be adapted for Earth use to help paraplegics walk.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.space.com/9705-top-10-star-trek-technologies.html">Many real-life innovations drew inspiration from films and television</a>, but Harding says exoskeletons aren't one of them.</p>
<p>"We try to look into the future and what you're going to want to do with an exoskeleton, and then build a mechanical structure that makes sense technically to do the job and fit those parameters," he said. "So it's interesting now to see science fiction feeding it back at us and making science fiction look kind of like the reality."</p>
<p><em>Email </em><a href="mailto:jscharr@technewsdaily.com"><em>jscharr@technewsdaily.com</em></a><em> or follow her </em><a href="https://twitter.com/JillScharr/"><em>@JillScharr</em></a><em>. Follow us <a href="https://twitter.com/LiveScience">@livescience</a>, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/#%21/livescience">Facebook</a> &amp; <a href="https://plus.google.com/101164570444913213957/posts">Google+</a>. Original article on <a href="http://www.livescience.com/38779-elysium-exosuit-science-fiction.html">LiveScience.com.</a> </em></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.space.com/22242-elysium-space-film-photos-slideshow.html">Photos: 'Elysium' Launches Sci-Fi Space Colony to New Heights</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.space.com/22305-matt-damon-talks-elysiums-heart-soul-and-mind-exclusive-video.html">Exclusive Video: Matt Damon Shares Elysium's Heart, Soul &amp; Mind</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.livescience.com/29376-rise-of-super-intelligent-robots.html">Super-Intelligent Machines: 7 Robotic Futures</a></li>
</ul><p><strong>Find Us On Facebook —&nbsp;<a href="http://www.facebook.com/BusinessInsiderScience" >Business Insider: Science</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/elysium-like-exoskeletons-exist-2013-8#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/researchers-can-see-through-walls-with-wi-vi-2013-6Researchers Can See Through Walls With 'Wi-Vi'http://www.businessinsider.com/researchers-can-see-through-walls-with-wi-vi-2013-6
Sat, 29 Jun 2013 15:42:00 -0400Rachel Kaufman
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/51cf38666bb3f7164b000008-480-/wivi-mit-1.jpg" border="0" alt="wivi mit" width="480" /></p><p><span>Want X&shy;ray vision like the man of steel? A technology that lets you see behind walls could soon be built in to your cell phone.</span></p>
<p>MIT professor Dina Katabi and graduate student Fadel Adib have announced Wi&shy;Vi, a demonstration of a technology that uses&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/17732-what-is-wi-fi.html">Wi&shy;Fi</a>&nbsp;to allow a viewer to "see" a person moving behind a wall. (Wi&shy;Vi stands for "Wi&shy;Fi" and "vision.")</p>
<p>Previous work demonstrated that the subtle reflections of wireless inter signals bouncing off a human could be used to track that person's movements, but those previous experiments either required that a&nbsp;<a href="http://wireless-router-review.toptenreviews.com/">wireless router</a>&nbsp;was already in the room of the person being tracked, or "a whole truck just to carry the radio," said Katabi.</p>
<p>The new device uses the same wireless antenna as is found in a cell phone or laptop and could in theory one day be embedded in a phone. [See also "<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/18262-gesture-detection-system-uses-wifi.html">WiSee Detects Your Gestures Using WiFi</a>."]</p>
<p>The trick is canceling out all interfering signals &ndash; Wi-Fi doesn't just bounce off humans, but also walls, floors, and furniture. And those signals are 10,000 to 100,000 times more powerful than the reflections off a human body.</p>
<p>Katabi's wi&shy;vi sends out two wireless signals, one of which is the inverse of the other. In what Katabi calls "interference nulling," the two signals cancel each other out unless they hit a moving target &ndash; such as a human.</p>
<p>"To silence the noise, we change the structure of the Wi-Fi signal so all the undesired reflections cancel," she said.</p>
<p>The device is meant to be portable so, for example, a person worried that someone was hiding in the bushes could do a quick scan for her personal safety.</p>
<p>Wi&shy;Vi could also serve as a high tech baby monitor or help Superman &ndash; or just cops &ndash; catch baddies.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/1229-7-quirky-gadgets-for-the-home.html">7 Quirky Gadgets for the Home</a></li>
<li><a href="http://news.techmedianetwork.com/cms/articles/16377-future-electronics-gadgets-change">Future Electronics: How Gadgets Will Change in 5 Years</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/2794-6-ways-to-get-a-stronger-wi-fi-signal-at-home.html">6 Ways to Get a Stronger Wi-Fi Signal at Home</a></li>
</ul>
<p><span>Copyright 2013&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/">TechNewsDaily</a>, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</span></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/researchers-can-see-through-walls-with-wi-vi-2013-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/cheap-holographic-video-coming-2013-6Cheap Holographic Video Is Cominghttp://www.businessinsider.com/cheap-holographic-video-coming-2013-6
Fri, 21 Jun 2013 18:33:00 -0400Tom Spring
<p>Forget about 3D glasses.</p>
<p>Holographic monitors &mdash; which render images that, even to the naked eye, seem to float in space &mdash; could soon become an affordable reality for the masses.</p>
<p>Researchers at MIT say they have cut the cost of producing key components that until now have kept holographic video displays as being only expensive lab projects costing tens of thousands of dollars to a commodity costing about $200 and compatible with a regular PC.</p>
<p>In a new study published in the current issue of Nature, Daniel Smalley, a graduate student at MIT's Media Lab, outlined his work manufacturing an optical chip used to create color holographic videos for about $10 (about 6 percent of what it has cost), thus drastically bringing down the price of the whole system. <br /><br /><img class="full" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/51c4cb206bb3f72a43000005-800-/holographic-butterfly.jpg" border="0" alt="holographic butterfly" width="800" />Smalley built a prototype display that renders color holographic video at resolutions equal to that of a standard-definition TV. [See also: <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/4074-cheaper-3d-boasts-titanic-entertainment.html">Cheaper 3D Boasts Titanic Entertainment</a>]</p>
<p>Smalley's breakthrough was streamlining how holographic displays render images.</p>
<p>&ldquo;Until now, if you wanted to make a light modulator (used for holographic video) for a video projector, or an LCD panel for a <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/17791-when-can-i-buy-oled-tv.html">TV</a> &hellip; you had to deal with the red light, the green light and the blue light [that make up a fill-color video] separately,&rdquo; said study co-author Michael Bove, a research scientist at the Media Lab and head of its Object-Based Media Group.</p>
<p>Not only is the old method inefficient, it also blocks two-thirds of the light, resulting in reduced resolution, Bove explained.</p>
<p>Smalley's solution was to build an inexpensive processor that can modulate red, green and blue light simultaneously, thus enabling higher resolutions and more computational efficiency.</p>
<p>Bove predicts his team's breakthrough will lead to affordable and higher resolution holographic displays within the next 5 years.</p>
<p>The lab's new prototype holographic display is about the size of a postcard and can run off of an average PC running four high-end Nvidia graphic cards. [See video:<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/14744-video-hologram-fashion-show.html">Hologram Fashion Show</a>]</p>
<p>Bove says component costs to build a holographic video display can now be reduced to about $200 and can plug into a regular PC. The only catch, he says, is the cost of the high-end video cards required to render the complex holographic video.</p>
<p>But Bove predicted that the costs of graphics cards will eventually come down, and a 30-inch holographic displays could soon become commonplace.</p>
<p>Another hurdle, he admits, will be reducing the bulk of the displays, currently about equal to that of an old CRT monitor.</p>
<p>MIT's holographic display technology has the potential of opening new doors for the gaming industry and Hollywood. It could also create new opportunities for high-end 3D video conferencing (a.k.a. telepresence) and computer-aided design used by engineers, Bove says.</p>
<p>"We have solved the problem of high-cost, low-quality holographic videos that have restrictive viewing angles," Bove says. "In five years you'll be able to buy a 30-inch 3D holographic video display that won't break the bank."</p><p><strong>Find Us On Facebook —&nbsp;<a href="http://www.facebook.com/BusinessInsiderScience" >Business Insider: Science</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cheap-holographic-video-coming-2013-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/helicopter-is-controlled-by-thought-2013-6This Tiny Helicopter Is Controlled By Human Thoughthttp://www.businessinsider.com/helicopter-is-controlled-by-thought-2013-6
Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:55:41 -0400Elizabeth Palermo
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/51af4f10eab8ea667c000004-400-300/quadrocopter-helicopter-mind-control-2.png" border="0" alt="Quadrocopter Helicopter Mind Control" width="400" height="300" /></p><p>You may have had remote controlled airplanes growing up, but they probably weren't as cool as the quadcopter.</p>
<p>This tiny helicopter looks a lot like a toy, but it's really a high-tech robot controlled exclusively by human thought.</p>
<p>Developed by a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota, the four-blade helicopter, or quadcopter, can be quickly and accurately controlled for a sustained amount of time using the electrical impulses associated with a subject's thoughts.</p>
<p>The team used a noninvasive technique known as&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/15966-mental-screening-predict-murder.html">electroencephalography</a>&nbsp;(EEG) to record the electrical brain activity of five different subjects. Each subject was fitted with a cap equipped with 64 electrodes, which sent signals to the quadcopter over a WiFi network.</p>
<p>The subjects were positioned in front of a screen that relayed images of the quadcopter's flight through an on-board camera, allowing them to see the course the way a pilot would. The plane, which was driven with a pre-set forward moving velocity, was then controlled by the subject's thoughts.</p>
<p>By imagining that they were using their right hand, left hand and both hands together, subjects controlled the flight path of the plane. If they imagined raising their left hand, for example, the plane turned left. If they imagined raising their hands together, the plane lifted higher in the air.</p>
<p><iframe width="590" height="375" frameborder="0" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6LWz4qa2XQA"></iframe></p>
<p>Once they got the hang of it, subjects were able to fly the quadcopter through foam rings scattered around the indoor course.</p>
<p>"Our study shows that for the first time, humans are able to control the flight of flying robots using just their thoughts, sensed from noninvasive brain waves," said Bin He, lead scientist behind the study and a professor with the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering.</p>
<p>He and his fellow researchers plan on using the study to further their understanding of how a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/5266-wheres-my-future-brain-computer-interface.html">brain-computer interface</a>(BCI) can help assist, augment or repair cognitive or sensory-motor functions in those suffering from paralysis or other disabilities.</p>
<p>"Our next goal is to control robotic arms using noninvasive brain wave signals," said He. "With the eventual goal of developing brain-computer interfaces that aid patients with disabilities or neurodegenerative disorders."</p>
<p>The University of Minnesota team isn't the only group of researchers making breakthroughs in the field of brain-controlled avionics. Scientists at the University of Essex in the U.K. are also working with researchers at NASA to create a BCI that can be used&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/17244-look-nasa-no-hands-astronauts-fly-on-brainpower-alone.html">aboard a spacecraft simulator</a>. The team hopes to one day use the interface to assist fatigued astronauts during space travel.</p>
<p>And last year, researchers at Zhejiang University in China were able to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/6154-mind-control-flying-drone.html">control a hovering drone</a>&nbsp;using a commercial EEG headset, setting the stage for more advanced uses of this noninvasive brain technology in the future.</p>
<p><em>Email&nbsp;<a href="mailto:asklizzyp@gmail.com">asklizzyp@gmail.com</a>&nbsp;or follow her&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/techEpalermo">@techEpalermo</a>. Follow us&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/TechNewsDaily">@TechNewsDaily</a>, on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/TechNewsDaily">Facebook</a>&nbsp;or on&nbsp;<a href="https://plus.google.com/100300602874158393473/posts">Google+</a>.</em></p>
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<li><a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/223-beyond-the-mouse-5-ways-well-interface-with-future-computers.html">Beyond the Mouse: 5 Ways We&rsquo;ll Interface With Future Computers</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/62-10-profound-innovations-ahead.html">10 Profound Innovations Ahead</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/18207-5-curiously-specific-robots.html">5 Curiously Specific Robots</a></li>
</ul><p><strong>SEE ALSO:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/photo-review-a-road-trip-in-the-bmw-m6-2013-5#" >BMW's M6 Convertible Is Surprisingly Difficult To Understand</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/helicopter-is-controlled-by-thought-2013-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/invisibility-cloaks-made-by-3d-printers-2013-5Now You Can 3D Print Your Own Invisibility Cloakhttp://www.businessinsider.com/invisibility-cloaks-made-by-3d-printers-2013-5
Sat, 18 May 2013 12:00:00 -0400Charles Q. Choi
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/51967d276bb3f7cd51000005-401-300/invisible-shoes.png" border="0" alt="Invisible Shoes" width="401" height="300" /></p><p>Invisibility cloaks made of plastic can now be created at home using 3D printers, researchers show.</p>
<p>The first clues that cloaking devices might one day become more than science fiction, a la "Star Trek" began emerging <a href="http://www.livescience.com/technology/050228_invisible_shield.html">seven or so years ago</a>.</p>
<p>Since then researchers <a href="http://www.livescience.com/technology/061019_invisibility_cloak.html">have made such cloaks a reality</a> by smoothly guiding rays of electromagnetic radiation <a href="http://www.livescience.com/28171-invisibility-cloak-physics-light.html">such as microwave beams</a> completely around objects so they proceed along their original trajectory as if nothing were there.</p>
<p>The first working invisibility cloaks were demonstrated using complex lab experiments. They can now, in principle, get made at home using 3D printers.</p>
<p>"I would argue that essentially anyone who can spend a couple thousand dollars on a non-industry- grade 3D printer can literally make a plastic cloak overnight," said researcher Yaroslav Urzhumov, an electrical engineer at Duke University.</p>
<p>A 3D printer lays down thin layers of material much like ordinary printers, except it deposits layers on top of layers to create 3D objects. Increasingly, they are being used to make items out of plastic, metal, glass, ceramic, and even sugar and mashed potatoes.</p>
<p>Urzhumov said creating an invisibility cloak using a 3D printer was easy and relatively inexpensive. For instance, printers can make ones about 1 inch thick (3 centimeters) and 8 inches wide (20 cm) resembling Frisbees made of Swiss cheese.</p>
<p>Previous invisibility cloaks all included a fair amount of metal, "but with these new cloaks, no metal is involved," Urzhumov told TechNewsDaily. "This makes them easier to fabricate and lighter. Also, when a light wave hits a structure containing a lot of metal, it is attenuated, and the only way to have a cloak without attenuation is to get rid of these metals. Now we know it is possible to make microwave cloaks entirely out of nonmetallic materials, which is very exciting."</p>
<p>The cloaks have open spots in their centers in which to place items up to 5.5 inches wide (14 cm). When microwaves are beamed at those objects from the side, the cloaks make it look as if the items are not there.</p>
<p>"A metal cylinder that would normally reflect a lot of microwave radiation can, once placed in the cloak, become transparent to microwaves," Urzhumov said.</p>
<p>Cloaks that make objects invisible to microwaves could have military and civilian applications.</p>
<p>"If you want to eliminate obstacles such as pillars or small buildings to microwave antennas, you could use these cloaks, which could be helpful for communications and for radar," Urzhumov said.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/invisibility-cloaks-made-by-3d-printers-2013-5#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/why-fertilizer-plant-explosion-so-deadly-2013-4Why The Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion Was So Deadlyhttp://www.businessinsider.com/why-fertilizer-plant-explosion-so-deadly-2013-4
Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:07:48 -0400Jillian Scharr
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/517adaf3ecad04241f000000-400-300/texas-west-fertilizer-explosion-6.jpg" border="0" alt="Texas West Fertilizer Explosion" width="400" height="300" /></p><p>It may seem incredible that a substance can be both nourishing and lethal.</p>
<p>But that's the case in the explosion at the fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas, which witnesses likened to a nuclear blast.</p>
<p>The substance that killed up to 15 people, injured 180 and wrecked the buildings in a five-block radius is the same stuff that makes the beans and barley grow.</p>
<p>But not all fertilizers are equally dangerous. And the West plant may have been harboring the worst of them all.</p>
<p>Barring any criminal involvement, in which case all bets are off, the two most likely culprits in the blast are anhydrous ammonia and ammonium nitrate. Both are inorganic fertilizers that were being stored in "substantial amounts" at the West Chemical and Fertilizer Company building, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/us/huge-blast-at-texas-fertilizer-plant.html?pagewanted=all">the New York Times reports</a>.</p>
<p>Anhydrous ammonia is a gas that can cause severe burns when it comes in contact with human skin, Richard Ferguson, professor of soil science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln told TechNewsDaily. But it won't burst into flames.&nbsp;</p>
<p>"You need to use safety gloves and goggles around [anhydrous ammonia], but it&rsquo;s not explosive," said Ferguson. "It's not very flammable at all &hellip; If an [anhydrous ammonia] tank ruptures, the tank is going to decompress explosively, but that&rsquo;s not chemical, that&rsquo;s physical." Think of a balloon bursting rather than erupting in a fireball.</p>
<p>Ammonium nitrate is another story. This fertilizer is a gravel-like solid, making it far easier to handle and transport. But when mixed with a fuel and ignited, it becomes a powerful explosive.</p>
<p>Ammonium nitrate was the primary explosive used in the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995.&nbsp; Bomber Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols purchased&nbsp; forty 50-pound bags of the fertilizer from a supply company in Kansas, according to their testimony. The ammonium nitrate, mixed with a fuel called nitromethane &nbsp;and an explosive used by commercial mining companies called Tovex, was enough to level the &nbsp;Alfred P. Murrah Federal building, damage 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius and kill 168 people, according to the Oklahoma City Police Department report.</p>
<p>At the Texas fertilizer plant, something else served as a fuel: firefighters responded to a fire on the premises at around 7:30. The explosion occurred at 7:50</p>
<p>"In many parts of the country, ammonium nitrate has largely disappeared from the market because of the concern for its safety," Ferguson told TechNewsDaily.</p>
<p>In a now-infamous report filed before the accident, Texas regulators claimed that the plant&rsquo;s "worst-case scenario" would be a 10-minute release of gas that would injure no one. That sounds like anhydrous ammonia. If it were to escape into the atmosphere, it would dissipate so rapidly that it wouldn&rsquo;t be able to cause anything more than skin irritation and a bad smell, said Ferguson.</p>
<p>Ferguson was hesitant to speculate, but did say that ammonium nitrate appears to be the more likely candidate for the force behind the West, Texas, explosion., even though the plant primarily stored anhydrous ammonia.</p>
<p>"I&rsquo;m not aware of any state where ammonium nitrate is predominant source [of inorganic fertilizer] where 30, 40 years ago it might have been," Ferguson told TechNewsDaily. &ldquo;And that&rsquo;s related primarily to security concerns.&rdquo;</p>
<p>So why is ammonium nitrate still in use? It's cheap and effective.</p>
<p>You could be forgiven if you associate fertilizer with manure &mdash; organic waste is the oldest and most natural way to boost soil nutrient content.&nbsp; And it&rsquo;s very hard to make poop explode.</p>
<p>But manure alone doesn&rsquo;t cut it. "'There just aren&rsquo;t enough organic sources of fertilizer [i.e. manure] to raise the crops that we raise today," said Ferguson. "The foods that we eat are all primarily reliant on inorganic fertilizers ... Our society today would not be where it is without inorganic fertilizer."</p>
<p>One of the more popular synthetic options is urea, an ammonium-based compound that is safer to transport, handle and disperse than anhydrous ammonia and ammonium nitrate. But it is a bit more complicated to manufacture, and also works less efficiently than ammonium nitrate, because when it hits the soil, the resulting reaction lets a lot of nitrogen escape into the atmosphere.</p>
<p>This "volatile loss," as it&rsquo;s called, is amplified in soils with a low acidity. And as a general rule, soil in the western part of the U.S. tends to be more alkaline (the opposite of acidic), meaning urea is a less effective fertilizer in parts of Texas.</p>
<p>Another option is ammonium sulfate. This is the substance primarily used at the <a href="http://www.apfcorp.net/index.html">American Plant Food Corporation</a>, a producer and marketer of fertilizer based in Houston. Ammonium sulfate is well-suited to alkaline soils, and is less flammable, but it offers fewer nutrients for its weight than ammonium nitrate.</p>
<p>The West, Texas, disaster will, if anything, only accelerate the declining usage of ammonium nitrate as a fertilizer, Ferguson said. But because of its low price, effectiveness and relative ease of transport, ammonium nitrate will probably still be in use &mdash; and still pose a danger &mdash; for some time.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-fertilizer-plant-explosion-so-deadly-2013-4#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/your-brain-is-really-bad-at-filtering-out-overheard-phone-calls-2013-3Your Brain Is Really Bad At Filtering Out Overheard Phone Callshttp://www.businessinsider.com/your-brain-is-really-bad-at-filtering-out-overheard-phone-calls-2013-3
Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:08:00 -0400Charles Q. Choi
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4f7af46decad048932000010-400-300/onphone.jpg" border="0" alt="girl, phone, talking, cell phone" /></p><p>Overhearing a one-sided cellphone call is more distracting than eavesdropping on both sides of a conversation, a new study finds.</p>
<p>There are now as many cellphone subscriptions as there are people on Earth, according to the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations telecommunications agency. As mobile phones increasingly permeate society, with people spending an estimated 2.30 trillion minutes using wireless devices over the last year, scientists want to study the impact cellphones might have on daily life.</p>
<p>"People find <a href="http://cell-phones.toptenreviews.com/smartphones/">cellphone</a> conversations annoying &mdash; survey results indicate that up to 82 percent of people do," Veronica Galv&aacute;n, a cognitive psychologist at the University of San Diego, told TechNewsDaily. "We were curious to see what cognitive effects overhearing cellphone conversations might have, since they are now so pervasive in everyday life."</p>
<p>[<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/15734-top-cellphone-complaint-may-surprise-you.html">Top Cellphone Complaint May Surprise You</a>]</p>
<p>To see how precisely cellphone chatter might distract people, Galv&aacute;n and her team had about 150 volunteers complete a task where they had to unscramble letters to form words &mdash; for instance, rearrange "suohe" to form "house." As the volunteers performed the task, the scientists carried out a short, scripted conversation in the background that volunteers were unaware was part of the study. Half the volunteers overheard one side of a chat carried out on a cellphone, while the rest overheard the conversation as a discussion between two people in the room with them. The discussions involved a mundane topic, such as shopping for furniture, a birthday party and meeting a date at the mall.</p>
<p>The people who overheard the one-sided mobile phone call thought the background conversation was far more distracting than those who heard it as a chat between two people.</p>
<p>"This is the first study to use a realistic situation to show that overhearing a cellphone conversation is a uniquely intrusive and memorable event," Galv&aacute;n said.</p>
<p>People not only thought cellphone conversations were more attention-grabbing, but they also remembered more words and content from the cellphone discussions than they did from two-sided conversations and made fewer errors recognizing which words were part of the phone call. Past research suggests this is due to how one-sided conversations are more unpredictable than ones where people can hear both sides of a discussion.</p>
<p>"Not knowing where the conversation is heading is what makes cellphone calls more <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/15641-drone-pilots-may-need-distractions.html">distracting</a>," said study co-author Rosa Vessal at the University of San Diego.</p>
<p>Galv&aacute;n recalled how distracting cellphone calls could be in her own life.</p>
<p>"We'd been doing the study for a couple of months, and I was at the store looking at clothes, and the lady next to me was on a cellphone saying, 'Yeah, he was in jail last night,'" Galv&aacute;n said. "I had no idea what she was talking about &mdash; it was just a snipped-off conversation without context, and it really was different from a conversation you could hear both sides of."</p>
<p>In the future, the researchers plan on seeing whether people are more susceptible to distraction while <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/5472-mind-scientist-eavesdrop-hear.html">eavesdropping</a> on cellphone calls and performing certain kinds of tasks rather than others.</p>
<p>"It's going to difficult to ever get rid of cellphones, since they're now such an important means of communication," Galv&aacute;n said. "Still, it's my guess that some tasks are more susceptible to distraction by cellphone conversations than others, and so it's possible calls might get more restricted in areas where they might distract people from important tasks."</p>
<p>Galv&aacute;n, Vessal and their colleague Matthew Golley detailed their findings online March 13 in the journal PLOS ONE.</p>
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</ul><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/your-brain-is-really-bad-at-filtering-out-overheard-phone-calls-2013-3#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-years-from-a-nuclear-bomb-2013-2North Korea Is Actually Years From A Nuclear Bombhttp://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-years-from-a-nuclear-bomb-2013-2
Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:10:00 -0500Jesse Emspak
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/511e922969beddb92100000b-400-/north-korea-tv-nuclear.png" border="0" alt="North Korea TV Nuclear" width="400" /></p><p>Following the third nuclear test conducted by North Korea, two natural questions are how long it will take the country to build a real nuclear weapon, and whether the U.S. could pull off a military strike before then to stop the program.</p>
<p>The short answers: It will be at least a few years before North Korea is capable of building a bomb that threatens close neighbors, and several years before it can threaten the United States directly. Meanwhile, a military strike would be a roll of the dice.</p>
<p>First, the facts of the test: The North Korean government confirmed that it had <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/16865-north-korea-third-nuclear.html">conducted one Tuesday</a> (Feb. 12), and the seismic activity from the underground blast indicated an explosion equal to about 6,000 to 7,000 tons of high explosive.</p>
<p>To put that in perspective, that&rsquo;s a fraction of the power of the bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and even tinier when compared with most current nuclear weapons. Even so, a bomb that size would be a real threat.</p>
<p>"Seven kilotons would do a lot of damage in downtown Seoul," Hans Kristensen, director of nuclear information at the Federation of American Scientists, told TechNewsDaily.</p>
<p>The explosive yield of the test also marked a big jump ― by a factor of three or more ― from previous tests conducted by North Korea.</p>
<p>[<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/16870-air-tests-north-korea-nuclear.html">Air Chemistry May Reveal Details about North Korea Nuke</a>]</p>
<p>While Pyongyang has demonstrated that it can pull off big explosions, making a nuclear weapon is different, Kristensen said. The North Korean news agency claimed that the tested device was "miniaturized," but the North Koreans don't seem to have anything they can strap under the wing of a plane or mount onto a <a href="http://www.space.com/19601-how-intercontinental-ballistic-missiles-work-infographic.html">missile</a>, he said.</p>
<p>Such a bomb isn't easy to develop, as the U.S. learned in 1945. Scientists were able to set off a test nuclear explosion at the Trinity site in New Mexico, but it still took a lot of work for America to simultaneously develop bombs that could be carried on airplanes of the period ― this despite having a lot of money, some of the best engineering and scientific talent in the world, and the urgency of a <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/5125-nazi-weapons-wwii-third-reich.html">war</a>.</p>
<p>So although the leadership of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea seems determined to build a bomb, that doesn't mean they can do so as quickly as they might want or as many people fear.</p>
<p>A big factor will be what kind of weapon the North Korean military is shooting for. Uranium-based nuclear bombs, like the one dropped on Hiroshima, involve a cylinder of uranium fired into another cylinder of uranium.</p>
<p>Those are relatively easy to design, but they tend to be larger and need more fissionable material for a given yield. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima, for example, required some 100 pounds of uranium to work. Kristensen said it doesn't look as if the North Koreans have gone that route, at least not yet.</p>
<p>The second design, called the implosion type, consists of a sphere of plutonium surrounded by explosive charges. It's the design that has been used in every known nuclear weapons program so far. This design requires a lot less plutonium and offers more powerful blasts, but is trickier to implement. All the charges must go off at exactly the same time, and they have to compress the plutonium equally on all sides.</p>
<p>"If they don't, it's like squeezing a banana," Kristensen said. "Designing something in theory is one thing, but in engineering there are always unforeseen problems."</p>
<p>Another challenge North Korea will face is the issue of transporting the bomb. North Korea doesn't have a bomber that can reach any part of the U.S., so that leaves missiles as the delivery mechanism.</p>
<p>While North Korea has tested rockets that can launch satellites, they don't appear to have one that can reach the continental United States, at least not yet, said Nick Hansen, an analyst at the <a href="http://38north.org/">38North</a> blog who writes extensively about the country's missile program.</p>
<p>"What they need, to make their threats credible, is not the Unha-3 rocket. It has many shortcomings as an ICBM, and most experts agree as a weapon it has very limited utility and is probably a dead end," Hansen told TechNewsDaily in an email.</p>
<p>A larger rocket might appear after 2015. The missile that has some potential, he said, is called the KN-08, but it isn't likely to put North Korea into "The ICBM Club" until late in the decade.</p>
<p>Developing a missile that can reach the U.S. couldn't be done in secret, Kristensen noted &mdash; it's just too big a project, and the launches are too visible.</p>
<p>Some might ask why Pyongyang doesn't simply load a bomb onto a ship and sail it into a port. The answer: Aside from the difficulty of a North Korean ship entering an American or U.S. ally's harbor, such an action would be a pre-emptive strike, and that would be suicidal. Most experts agree Kim Jong-Un and his government want to survive.</p>
<p>Considering North Korea&rsquo;s perceived global security threat, there has been talk of possibly taking out either its nuclear facilities or launch pads. William J. Perry, who had been secretary of defense under Bill Clinton, said in 2006, for example, that such action should be considered.</p>
<p>But doing so might prove difficult. David Straub, associate director of Korean Studies Program at <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/stanford">Stanford University</a>'s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, noted that the locations of all the country's nuclear facilities may not be known.</p>
<p>"Their main facility is at Yongbyon," he said, but "most experts believe they have an additional facility and likely multiple ones in the country." Even Perry, at a symposium in Seoul earlier this month, said he opposed the idea.</p>
<p>Kristensen said while it is possible to do a lot of damage to the North Korean weapons program, and push back its timetable by years, unleashing a military assault on the country could have serious consequences.</p>
<p>"North Korea is not Syria or Iraq," Kristensen said, referring to countries whose nuclear facilities were targets of Israeli raids. Neither country retaliated for the raid &mdash; Iraq was already in a war, against Iran; and Syria only lodged protests.</p>
<p>The North Korean government, by contrast, might fire on South Korea&nbsp; using missiles armed with conventional or even chemical warheads, or it might mobilize an attack on the demilitarized zone.</p>
<p>"The North Korean leaders are perfectly happy to play brinksmanship with their populations," Straub said. "Our side is not."</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-years-from-a-nuclear-bomb-2013-2#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/new-stain-proof-material-can-repel-virtually-any-liquid-2013-1New Stain-Proof Material Can Repel Virtually Any Liquid http://www.businessinsider.com/new-stain-proof-material-can-repel-virtually-any-liquid-2013-1
Fri, 18 Jan 2013 10:25:00 -0500Jeremy Hsu
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/50f9690169bedd6b5700001b-400-/stain-proof-material.jpg" border="0" alt="Stain-proof material" width="400" /></p><p>Military leaders and laundry-plagued mothers both have reason to rejoice over an improvement in the development of liquid-repelling surfaces. For the first time, lab researchers have created a&nbsp; "superomniphobic" coating that resists not only water and juice but everything from blood to hydrochloric acid.</p>
<p>Past coatings focused on resisting Newtonian fluids such as water or apple juice but had more trouble with oils and alcohols. The new coating can handle both Newtonian fluids and non-Newtonian fluids such as blood, yogurt and gravy &mdash; paving the way for truly stain-free clothing, suits that shrug off bacteria, even protective garments resistant to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.livescience.com/20844-ancient-warship-ram-degrading.html">corrosive acid</a>.</p>
<p>The new coating combines silicone with an organic-inorganic polymer to become virtually impenetrable by a huge array of liquids. Droplets bead up and roll off the surface. Jets of various liquids simply bounce off at an angle.</p>
<p>Researchers even dipped an aluminum plate into hydrochloric acid to show how the side containing the new coating remained unaffected. By comparison, the unprotected side of the plate was heavily damaged.</p>
<p>The scientific team from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor teamed up with the Air Force Research Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., to create the superomniphobic surface. More details on the study appeared in the Dec. 23 online edition of the&nbsp;<a href="http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/ja310517s">Journal of the American Chemical Society</a>.</p>
<p>Such results could greatly interest both the military and commercial manufacturers. Funding for the study came from the American Chemical Society's Petroleum Research Fund, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the China Scholarship Council (a Chinese government nonprofit organization that gives financial aid to Chinese students studying abroad).</p>
<p>The Army began looking into similar surfaces last year in the hope of producing uniforms that protect soldiers against biological and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/15233-smart-uniforms-to-sense-chemical-weapons.html">chemical threats</a>, shield them from rain or snow, and lighten the laundry loads.</p>
<p><em>You can follow TechNewsDaily Senior Writer Jeremy Hsu on <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/twitter">Twitter</a> @<a href="http://twitter.com/jeremyhsu">jeremyhsu</a>. Follow TechNewsDaily on Twitter @<a href="http://twitter.com/TechNewsDaily">TechNewsDaily</a>. We're also on&nbsp;<a href="http://facebook.com/TechNewsDaily">Facebook</a>&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;<a href="https://plus.google.com/b/100300602874158393473/100300602874158393473">Google+</a>.</em></p>
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</ul>
<p><span>Copyright 2013&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/">TechNewsDaily</a>, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</span></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/new-stain-proof-material-can-repel-virtually-any-liquid-2013-1#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/congestion-tied-to-certain-commuters-2012-12It Only Takes A Few People To Make A Traffic Jamhttp://www.businessinsider.com/congestion-tied-to-certain-commuters-2012-12
Sun, 23 Dec 2012 11:07:00 -0500Charles Q. Choi
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4e6e58aeeab8ea187600001c-400-300/TrafficJam.jpg" border="0" alt="Traffic Jam" /></p><p>Canceling some car trips from just a few strategically located neighborhoods could drastically reduce gridlock and traffic jams in cities, a new study suggests.</p>
<p>The study, conducted amid a global trend toward urbanization, could lead to new strategies and maybe even&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/7613-hidden-smartphone-threats.html">smartphone</a>&nbsp;apps to help prevent traffic congestion, the researchers said.</p>
<p>Nearly 5 billion people are expected to be living in cities next year. Urban road networks already are subject to severe traffic congestion, which can decrease road quality and increase fuel consumption and air pollution.</p>
<p>In 2007 alone, the study authors noted, congestion forced Americans living in metropolitan areas to spend 4.2 billion more hours traveling and purchase an additional 2.8 billion gallons of fuel, at a total cost of more than $87 billion.</p>
<p>To learn more about traffic congestion in the hope of finding ways of relieving it, an international team of scientists analyzed road use patterns in the San Francisco Bay area and the Boston area.</p>
<p>They used&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/175-driving-distractions-the-risks-of-texting-and-mobile-phone-calls-in-cars.html">mobile phone</a>&nbsp;information from more than 1 million users over the course of three weeks to map out where drivers were concentrated on roads. (The data was rendered anonymous before the investigators looked at it, the study authors noted.)</p>
<p>[<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/2417-traffic-predicting-sensors-could-shorten-your-commute.html">Traffic-Predicting Sensors Could Shorten Your Commute</a>]</p>
<p>Based on their analysis, the researchers suggest that certain neighborhoods in these urban areas were home to drivers that caused major congestion. The scientists found that canceling just 1 percent of trips from these neighborhoods could drastically reduce travel time that was otherwise added due to congestion.</p>
<p>"In the Boston area, we found that canceling 1 percent of trips by select drivers in the Massachusetts municipalities of Everett, Marlborough, Lawrence, Lowell and Waltham would cut all drivers&rsquo; additional commuting time caused by traffic congestion by 18 percent," said researcher Marta Gonz&aacute;lez, a complex-systems scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.</p>
<p>"In the San Francisco area, canceling trips by drivers from Dublin, Hayward, San Jose, San Rafael and parts of San Ramon would cut 14 percent from the travel time of other drivers."</p>
<p>The location of these neighborhoods apparently makes it easy for them to impact their cities. "Being able to detect and then release the congestion in the most affected arteries improves the functioning of the entire coronary system," Gonz&aacute;lez &nbsp;told TechNewsDaily.</p>
<p>There are many ways people might reduce the number of drivers hitting the road from these key neighborhoods, the scientists said. For instance, the authorities might encourage alternatives "such as public transportation, carpooling, flex time and working from home," Gonz&aacute;lez said. Mobile phone apps that connect people using the same roads might help them coordinate carpooling, she added.</p>
<p>In compiling their data, the researchers did not need complete GPS information from all the travelers. "People are very repetitive in their travel patterns, and the number of data points only from billing information is vast," said Gonz&aacute;lez.</p>
<p>"This is enough to make good statistical estimates, despite not everyone using the phone all the time. With a good sample and analysis of long-time observations, we could calculate the trends of road usage."</p>
<p><span>Since mobile phones are now used worldwide, the research strategy that Gonz&aacute;lez and her colleagues used for Boston and San Francisco could potentially help relieve traffic in nearly every urban area. The scientists are currently studying road use in the Dominican Republic, France, Portugal, Rwanda and Spain.</span></p>
<p>"In many cities in the developing world, traffic congestion is a major problem," Gonz&aacute;lez said. "So the detailed methodology we developed for using cellphone data to accurately characterize road network use could help traffic managers control congestion and allow planners to create road networks that fit a population's needs."</p>
<p>The scientists detailed their findings online today (Dec. 20) in the journal Scientific Reports.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/congestion-tied-to-certain-commuters-2012-12#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/cancer-detector-inspired-by-jellyfish-2012-11How Jellyfish Help Detect Cancerhttp://www.businessinsider.com/cancer-detector-inspired-by-jellyfish-2012-11
Thu, 22 Nov 2012 13:14:00 -0500Charles Q. Choi
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/50ad09c269beddf15700000e-400-/jellyfish.gif" border="0" alt="Jellyfish" width="400" /></p><p>Jellyfish tentacles have inspired a way to detect cancer, microbes and viruses, researchers say.</p>
<p>Devices resulting from this research could help quickly and sensitively detect life-threatening diseases and capture dangerous cells for analysis so that doctors can devise the best therapies to fight them, investigators added.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/2589-pee-jellyfish-sting.html">Jellyfish</a> and relatives of theirs such as sea anemones capture prey flowing past them with long tentacles coated with multiple sticky patches.</p>
<p>These sea animals guided scientists to develop a novel microchip covered with a network of long DNA strands that could grab onto proteins as they floated by.</p>
<p>"Nature has overcome the most challenging barriers &hellip; Evolution really is the best problem-solver, and there is so much we can learn from nature," bioengineer Jeffrey Karp, co-director of the Center for Regenerative Therapeutics at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, told TechNewsDaily.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/15318-military-uses-dna-to-tackle-counterfeit-gear.html">DNA</a> is the molecule that holds the blueprints of life. Sequences of DNA known as aptamers also show a remarkable ability to bind onto very specific targets.</p>
<p>To test their device, Karp and his colleagues generated long DNA strands with aptamers that would bind onto a protein found abundantly on the surfaces of human cancer cells. The strands are up to hundreds of microns long &mdash; in comparison, the average human hair is about 100 microns wide. The length of these strands gives them more area to snag onto target proteins and their associated cells than other methods that employ antibodies or shorter DNA strands.</p>
<p>In addition, the strands are anchored onto a microchannel with a herringbone pattern on its floor. The patterned ridges cause <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/5953-3d-printed-sugar-technique-artificial-blood-vessels.html">blood</a> to swirl as it flows through the channel, improving the chances that cells will come into contact with the DNA tentacles.</p>
<p>In experiments, blood samples containing leukemia cells were flowed past the device. These long DNA tentacles efficiently captured up to about 80 percent of these cells, about six times more than methods relying on antibodies or shorter DNA strands.</p>
<p>"The chip we have developed is highly sensitive," said researcher Weian Zhao, formerly at Karp's lab, now at the University of California, Irvine. "From just a tiny amount of blood, the chip can detect and capture the small population of cancer cells responsible for cancer relapse."</p>
<p>In addition to hunting for blood-based cancers, the device might also find cancer cells that have broken away from tumors and are traveling through the bloodstream. Roaming cancers known as <a href="http://www.livescience.com/24432-window-mice-cancer-spread.html">metastases</a> are the leading cause of deaths from cancer, but these wandering cells are very rare in the bloodstream, with just a few to several thousand per milliliter of a patient's blood.</p>
<p>"Our device has the potential to catch these cells in the act with its 'tentacles' before they may seed a new tumor in a distant organ," Karp said.</p>
<p>In addition, the device could handle rates of flow 10 times faster than comparable methods. The researchers say they could boost this speed 100-fold, suggesting the system might be fast enough for practical use in the clinic.</p>
<p>"If you had a rapid test that could tell you whether there are more or less of these cells over time, especially those cells that can specifically seed a metastasis, that would help to monitor the progression of therapy and progression of the disease," Karp said.</p>
<p>Moreover, the device was able to later release entrapped cells so researchers could grow them in the laboratory. This could help enable personalized therapies &mdash; once cells are isolated from a patient, doctors could test a variety of drugs on them to see which might be most effective.</p>
<p>"One of the greatest challenges in the treatment of cancer patients is to know which drug to prescribe," Karp said. "By isolating circulating tumor cells before and after the first round of chemotherapy is given, we can determine the biology behind why certain cells are resistant to chemotherapy. We can also use the isolated cells to screen drugs for personalized treatments that could boost effectiveness and hopefully prevent cancer relapse."</p>
<p>The researchers can readily tailor the DNA tentacles to bind onto other targets, such as microbes and viruses. For instance, by targeting fetal cells that are very rare in a pregnant woman's bloodstream, the device could help doctors perform prenatal diagnostic tests for a range of diseases, an approach far less invasive than amniocentesis, which involves sticking a needle into the tissue surrounding the fetus.</p>
<p>"We are now gearing up to test our approach on patient samples," Karp said. "The major obstacle ahead of us is resources. The more we have, the more aggressively we can pursue this approach and advance it to the clinic."</p>
<p>Zhao, Karp and their colleague Rohit Karnik detailed their findings online Nov. 12 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/cancer-detector-inspired-by-jellyfish-2012-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/men-outshop-women-on-the-toilet-2012-11Thanks To Cellphones People Are Now Shopping In The Weirdest Placeshttp://www.businessinsider.com/men-outshop-women-on-the-toilet-2012-11
Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:49:07 -0500Leslie Meredith
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/5065c198eab8eaab2600000a-620-465/gift-present.jpg?maxX=400" border="0" alt="gift present" width="400" /></p><p>The next time your date or significant other excuses himself to visit the restroom, he may be shopping for your gift.</p>
<p>More than 38 million Americans shop online while&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/2924-lost-smartphone-contact-lists.html">on the toilet</a>, according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive for CashStar, a digital gift card company.</p>
<p>And men are more likely to shop in the bathroom than women.</p>
<p>The figures quoted in the study reflect the number of 2,104 online adults who said they shopped in a specified location as a percentage of the U.S. Census Bureau's 2011 population estimate.</p>
<p>Thanks to the portability of mobile devices, people are shopping in some pretty odd places.</p>
<p>Along with bathrooms, respondents also confessed to shopping in the boardroom. More than 9 million Americans admitted they have&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/4743-secretive-shoppers-prefer-using-mobile-apps.html">secretly shopped</a> while in a business meeting.</p>
<p>Despite the known dangers of driving and using smartphones, more than 4 million shop while navigating traffic.</p>
<p>Shopping in a store does not hamper mobile shopping for more than 17 million Americans. Multitasking now includes filling grocery carts at the same time as online shopping carts.</p>
<p>People living on the West Coast are more likely to shop on their phones while they walk the aisles as their East Coast counterparts, CashStar said.</p>
<p>Mobile shopping apps continue to grow, and big retailers such as Walmart are offering apps to shoppers that they can use in the store.</p>
<p>For the first time, Walmart mobile users will be able to get directions for in-store locations of Black Friday items as soon as they enter their local Walmart stores. For more tech holiday shopping helpers, read&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/15469-4-new-tools-for-black-friday-shopping.html">4 New Tools for Black Friday Shopping.</a></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/men-outshop-women-on-the-toilet-2012-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/a-glance-controls-augmented-reality-glasses-2012-11New Technology Allows You To Turn The Page With A Glancehttp://www.businessinsider.com/a-glance-controls-augmented-reality-glasses-2012-11
Tue, 06 Nov 2012 19:11:00 -0500Staff
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/509985f6ecad04436500001d-400-/augmented-reality-glasses.jpg" border="0" alt="augmented reality glasses" width="400" /></p><p>The simple act of turning a page has begun to look outdated with iPads replacing books and manuals for many working professionals.</p>
<p>But an augmented reality display similar to <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/google">Google</a> Glasses frees up wearers' hands by allowing them to turn virtual pages using their eyes alone.</p>
<p>Such a display comes in the form of <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/5804-google-glasses-touchpad-control.html">futuristic glasses</a> that allow wearers to see virtual maps, drawings or other images &mdash; up to 3 feet (1 meter) in size &mdash; projected in front of their eyes.</p>
<p>A chip smaller than half the size of a postage stamp can detect the wearer's eye movements so that they just need to glance at an arrow key to turn a page in a virtual instruction manual or book.</p>
<p>"The data glasses allow us to see the real world in the normal way, while at the same time registering our eye movements with the camera," said Rigo Herold, project manager at the Fraunhofer Center for Organics, Materials and Electronic Devices Dresden in Germany.</p>
<p>Such eye movement control frees up the hands of the glasses wearers entirely so that they can focus on their real-world work &mdash; whether they're U.S. military mechanics trying to fix armored vehicles or hospital surgeons doing a marathon operation.</p>
<p>The hands-free technology for the augmented reality glasses may also represent the future direction for Google Glasses. That head-worn display made by the Internet search giant was made public as something that requires hand control, but <a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/portable-devices/google-patents-eye-tracking-for-google-glass-1091428">TechRadar noticed</a> that Google has since patented eye-tracking technology for its glasses.</p>
<p>"Despite the fact that Google's data glasses, for instance, might be a little more stylish in appearance, navigating through the menu still requires using joysticks, whereas our glasses do not," Herold said.</p>
<p>Researchers plan to exhibit the technology at the Electronica 2012 trade fair in Munich from Nov. 13-16. But buyers will have the choice of ordering a computer with the system or installing the device's software on their own computer. The system can<a href="http://windows-operating-system-reviews.toptenreviews.com/"> run on Windows</a> or Linux.</p>
<p>The system's hardware and software came from German researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation IOSB, while the company TRIVISIO produced the actual eyewear.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/a-glance-controls-augmented-reality-glasses-2012-11#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-on-a-chip-created-by-scientists-2012-10Rat Brains On A Microchip Could Help Cure Alzheimer'shttp://www.businessinsider.com/brain-on-a-chip-created-by-scientists-2012-10
Tue, 23 Oct 2012 20:16:00 -0400Staff
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/503d2245ecad04e22500000a-400-300/brain-image-electrode.jpg" border="0" alt="Brain Image Electrode" /></p><p>A new microchip device that contains living brain and circulatory cells is designed to act like one tiny part of the human brain, leading the chip's creators to dub the device a "brain-on-a-chip."</p>
<p>"Our device is designed to be the most biologically realistic model of brain tissue developed in the lab thus far," Anil Achyuta, a bioengineer who led the brain-on-a-chip research at the nonprofit Draper Laboratory in Florida,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.draper.com/more_news.html#brainonachip">said in a statement</a>.</p>
<p>Unlike the microchips inside computers, cellphones and other gadgets, this brain-on-a-chip &mdash; which is made with living cells taken from rats &mdash; isn't imprinted with an electrical circuit. Instead, scientists consider it a microchip because it has a network of tiny channels inside.</p>
<p>Achyuta and his team hope to use the brain-on-a-chip to study important brain functions and problems, such as strokes or hardening arteries. They also hope they'll be able to use the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/670-lung-on-a-chip-could-put-an-end-to-animal-drug-testing.html">chip to test drugs</a>&nbsp;and other therapies for neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's.</p>
<p>Each chip contains neurons, the brain cells that carry information, along with supportive brain cells and cells taken from the inside of rats' blood vessels. That mix of cells allows researchers to use the chip to study how the brain and the circulatory system communicate with each other, which plays an important part in many neurological diseases.</p>
<p>Tiny channels in the chip carry liquid between the cells, giving them the nutrients they need to live, much like flowing blood would in the brain. The channels also have another use: If scientists want to study how a drug might affect brain cells, for instance, they could pump the drug into the chip through its liquid channels.</p>
<p>Achyuta's team is now looking to improve the chip and to add more types of cells to it. They also plan eventually to make the chip using lab-grown human cells instead of rat cells. (Currently, human neurons for experiments generally come from other types of cells that people donate to science, which scientists transform into brain cells using chemicals. Neurons may also come from fetuses donated to science.)</p>
<p>The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funded the brain-on-a-chip. The device is part of a larger, $26.3 million DARPA project aimed at creating small, plastic chip versions of many human organs. Ultimately, DARPA wants a system that connects several chip-organs into a "<a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/human-body-on-a-chip-research-funding-0724.html">human-body-on-a-chip</a>," which scientists can use to quickly test new drugs and vaccines.</p>
<p>Achyuta and his colleagues&nbsp;<a href="http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2012/LC/C2LC41033H">published their work</a>&nbsp;in the September issue of the journal Lab on a Chip.</p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/brain-on-a-chip-created-by-scientists-2012-10#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/indie-video-games-taking-over-the-industry-2012-6Indie Video Games Crushing Competition In The Industryhttp://www.businessinsider.com/indie-video-games-taking-over-the-industry-2012-6
Wed, 27 Jun 2012 11:19:00 -0400Robert Workman
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4fea260a6bb3f7db78000000-400-300/call-of-duty.jpg" border="0" alt="Call-of-Duty" width="400" height="300" /></p><p>When you turn on a video game, it's usually a multi-million&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/4461-indie-video-games-blockbusters.html#" target="_blank" class="itxtrst itxtrsta itxthook"><span class="itxtrst itxtrstspan itxthookspan" id="itxthook0w0">dollar</span></a>&nbsp;production. War simulator "Battlefield 3," football extravaganza "Madden <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/nfl" class="hidden_link">NFL</a> 12" and snowboarding game "SSX" are just a few of the titles that come to mind.</p>
<p>However, several smaller, independent developers are starting to make a splash on the scene. And gamers, along with big game companies, are starting to take notice.</p>
<p>Yesterday, Activision&ndash;makers of the "<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/4377-skylanders-giants-e3-hands.html" target="_blank">Skylanders</a>" and "Call of Duty" franchises&ndash;announced the winners of its Independent Games Competition, awarding top&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/4461-indie-video-games-blockbusters.html#" target="_blank" class="itxtrst itxtrsta itxthook"><span class="itxtrst itxtrstspan itxthookspan" id="itxthook1w0">dollars</span></a>&nbsp;to developers who presented innovative ideas. The winners turned out to be solo developers like <strong>Christopher Hui</strong>, whose "Iron Dragon" action flight adventure game won first place&ndash;netting him $175,000.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/sony" class="hidden_link">Sony</a> and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/4461-indie-video-games-blockbusters.html#" target="_blank" class="itxtrst itxtrsta itxthook"><span class="itxtrst itxtrstspan itxthookspan" id="itxthook2w0">Microsoft</span></a>, the makers of the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/playstation" class="hidden_link">PlayStation</a> 3 and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/xbox" class="hidden_link">Xbox</a> 360 consoles, respectively, have also given a great deal of attention to the "indie" game scene.</p>
<p>Sony has picked up the rights to several up-and-coming developments for <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/playstation-network" class="hidden_link">PlayStation Network</a>, including the music/rhythm action game "Dyad," put together by solo game maker <strong>Shawn McGrath</strong>, and "The Unfinished Swan," an artsy adventure by student <strong>Ian Dallas</strong> and his team at Giant Sparrow. Both games are due for release this year.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/microsoft" class="hidden_link">Microsoft</a> has for years been running an Indie Games channel on its Xbox Live service, home to Mommy's Best Games' frantic "Shoot 1Up," a vertical scrolling shooter inspired by those from years before.</p>
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4fea27616bb3f7f17800000b/shoot-1-up.jpg" border="0" alt="Shoot-1-Up" width="400" height="300" />Gamers are also getting directly involved with developers, thanks to the insurgence of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/kickstarter" class="hidden_link">Kickstarter</a> campaigns. These donation programs help game makers build funds for dream projects, including <strong>Tim Schafer's</strong> "Double Fine" adventure title. Schafer was shooting for a $400,000 funding goal; he eventually grossed more than $3.3 million. Other projects, including "Shadowrun Returns," fared just as well, exceeding small goals and guaranteeing that the game would be made, and provided with extras.</p>
<p>Hollywood has taken notice with the recently released "Indie Game: The Movie," which is available as a download on <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/itunes" class="hidden_link">iTunes</a> and, appropriately, the Steam game service, for around $10. The movie follows the ups-and-downs of developers trying to make their dream projects, including <strong>Jonathan Blow</strong>, the producer of the best-selling "Braid," and Polytron, the team behind the adventurous platformer "<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/4134-xbox-game-fez-flawlessly-combines.html" target="_blank">Fez</a>".</p>
<p>Even though gaming thrives on its huge franchises, independent titles have clearly found their place in this market. And what's more, a lot of the games being offered are a great deal of fun.</p>
<h2>SEE ALSO: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/attention-skyrim-fans-the-dawnguard-expansion-pack-is-out-today-and-its-bloody-good-2012-6">The Skyrim expansion pack was released today and it's bloody good &gt;</a></h2><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/indie-video-games-taking-over-the-industry-2012-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/thankfully-a-rat-is-still-smarter-than-google-2012-6Thankfully, A Rat Is Still Smarter Than Googlehttp://www.businessinsider.com/thankfully-a-rat-is-still-smarter-than-google-2012-6
Fri, 08 Jun 2012 13:47:00 -0400Seán Captain
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/4f9868376bb3f7e86300000d-400-/rat.jpg" border="0" alt="rat" width="400" /></p><p>And that's no dig at <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/google" class="hidden_link">Google</a>, according to artificial intelligence researchers Yann LeCun and Josh Tenenbaum. The two spoke at the World Science Festival in New York City after the premier of "The Creator: Alan Turing and the Future of Thinking Machines," a trippy arthouse film about 1940s and 1950s artificial intelligence visionary Alan Turing.</p>
<p>The galactic encyclopedia we know as Google is brilliant in many ways &mdash; for the amount of information it can absorb and shoot back in response to virtually any kind of question. Still, "It's rote learning; there's no understanding," said LeCun, a professor of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/4367-rat-smarter-google.html#" class="itxtrst itxtrsta itxthook" data-bitly-type="bitly_hover_card"><span class="itxtrst itxtrstspan itxthookspan" id="itxthook0w0">computer</span></a>&nbsp;and neural science at <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/nyu" class="hidden_link">New York University</a>.</p>
<p>In terms of computational ability, even the most-powerful&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/4367-rat-smarter-google.html#" class="itxtrst itxtrsta itxthook" data-bitly-type="bitly_hover_card"><span class="itxtrst itxtrstspan itxthookspan" id="itxthook1w0">computers</span></a>&nbsp;in the world are just approaching that of an insect, according to LeCun. "I would be happy in my lifetime to build a machine as intelligent as a rat," he said.</p>
<p>And some of the seemingly amazing things that Google can do, like giving us driving or walking directions nearly instantaneously, use only a basic kind of intelligence called simple planning. "That's very easy," said Tenenbaum, a professor of computational computer science at MIT. "It's not even called it AI anymore. It's just called Google." [<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/4294-research-tool-google-docs.html" data-bitly-type="bitly_hover_card">How to Use the New Research Tool in Google Docs</a>]</p>
<div class="album_overall">
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<div class="article_info">
<p>Real intelligence, they said, is not just memorizing but using what you've learned to figure out situations you've never experienced, such as the film the men had just seen. "You watch this film and you see images you've never seen before. You may not know anything about the life of this character," Tenenbaum said.</p>
<p>"That whole context of communication intelligence, of getting inside another person just by the data of what they say and you say back, that's the heart of human intelligence," he said.</p>
<p>The two professors are nowhere near that. LeCun, for example, is experimenting with a driving robot that tries to identify the objects around it. He showed a video of what the robot sees &mdash; how it labels objects like people, trees and roads. It generally gets them right, but often calls trees people, a patch of dirt water, a lamppost a building.</p>
<p>To show what AI researchers are up against, LeCun described the immensity of the human brain based on the latest, albeit very rough, estimates: 100 billion neurons make from 1,000 to 10,000 connections with other neurons and use those connections up to 100 to 1,000 times a second (a pretty high estimate). That's&nbsp;<em>perhaps</em>&nbsp;a quintillion &mdash; 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 &mdash; operations happening every second in everyone's head.</p>
<p>"But the power of supercomputers increases exponentially," said LeCun, estimating that they will reach that ability in "somewhere between 30 and a 100 years. Then we wait another 10 or 20 years, and it fits in your smartphone. So then your smartphone is smarter than you." [<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/4292-smartphone-app-soars.html" data-bitly-type="bitly_hover_card">Smartphone App Use Soars</a>]</p>
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</div><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/thankfully-a-rat-is-still-smarter-than-google-2012-6#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/surprisingly-america-is-not-the-most-facebook-addicted-country-in-the-world-2012-5Surprisingly, America Is Not The Most Facebook-Addicted Country In The Worldhttp://www.businessinsider.com/surprisingly-america-is-not-the-most-facebook-addicted-country-in-the-world-2012-5
Thu, 17 May 2012 17:24:54 -0400Leslie Meredith
<div class="article_info">
<p id="cke_pastebin"><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4fb2e8df69bedd960d00001a/facebook-scary.jpg" border="0" alt="Facebook Scary" />On the eve of Facebook's public stock offering, consumer-measurement&nbsp;<span class="itxtrst itxtrstspan itxthookspan" id="itxthook1w0">company&nbsp;</span>Nielsen has released figures showing that, while the United States has the most Facebook users, higher percentages of the population can be found in other countries.</p>
<p id="cke_pastebin">More than two out of every three Americans who are active online visited&nbsp;Facebook&nbsp;at least once during March, but even higher percentages of the online populations did so in Brazil, New Zealand, Italy and Taiwan, according to the Nielsen Co. report, &ldquo;Global and Social: Facebook's Rise Around the World.&rdquo;&nbsp;</p>
<p id="cke_pastebin">The 152 million Americans who visited Facebook at least once in March make up nearly 70 percent of U.S. residents who are on the Internet. Meanwhile, 77 percent of Brazilians online regularly use Facebook &nbsp;&ndash; but even that is not the top mark.</p>
<p id="cke_pastebin">Nearly 80 percent of online New Zealanders visited Facebook in March, a grand total of 2.7 million people on the islands, the highest share in the 12 countries Nielsen measured.</p>
<p id="cke_pastebin">What about the other end of the scale? Only about a quarter of Japan's Internet-connected population, or 15 million people, visit Facebook. In Japan,&nbsp;blogs&nbsp;&nbsp;are more popular than social media sites, Nielsen said.</p>
<p id="cke_pastebin">Overall, Facebook is the dominant&nbsp;social media&nbsp;network around the world, ranking first in all but Japan for the countries included in Nielsen's report.</p>
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</div><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/surprisingly-america-is-not-the-most-facebook-addicted-country-in-the-world-2012-5#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/with-all-that-cash-maybe-apple-should-create-a-bank-2012-3Apple Should Put All That Cash To Work... By Creating A Bankhttp://www.businessinsider.com/with-all-that-cash-maybe-apple-should-create-a-bank-2012-3
Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:26:21 -0400Seán Captain
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4f6c84f369bedd082900004c-360-/apple-bank.jpg" border="0" alt="apple bank" width="360" /></p><p>Computers, phones, music, tablets, TVs (maybe) &mdash; and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/4011-apple-bank-future-finance-survey.html#" class="itxtrst itxtrsta itxthook"><span class="itxtrst itxtrstspan itxthookspan" id="itxthook1w0">financial</span></a>&nbsp;services? The list of businesses <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/apple">Apple</a> has, or might, dominate, keeps growing &mdash; at least based on speculation. According to a new survey, if Apple were to open a bank, a lot of people could become financial switchers.</p>
<p>And the time might be getting ripe. <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/google">Google</a> is trying hard to turn its <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/android">Android</a> phones into digital cash. Phones equipped with <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/google-wallet">Google Wallet</a> technology (similar to a "tap to pay" credit card) have been rolling out. And payment terminals that accept Google Wallet are popping up all over, such as Bloomingdale's, <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/macys">Macy's</a>, <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/walgreens">Walgreens</a> and The <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/gap">Gap</a>. But these simply tie into bank accounts.</p>
<p>What if rival Apple (which doesn't even have digital payments yet) went one better and actually created a bank itself?</p>
<p>It may be far-fetched, but it might also be a hit. That's the conclusion from a fresh survey of 5,000 people in the U.S. and the U.K. by marketing and research consultancy KAE and online pollster Toluna.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Among them, 10 percent said they would consider switching to a hypothetical Apple Bank. (No relation to the actual Apple Bank chain in the New York City area. You can already imagine the trademark lawsuits. Or perhaps it would just be called "iBank.") Not surprisingly, Apple customers would be even keener. In fact, 43 percent are already up for it.</p>
<p>This says as much about how much people like Apple as about how little they like today's banks. Half of the possible switchers think that Apple would make their accounts easier to access and manage. Two-thirds said that trust in Apple would be the main motivation. Only 30 percent of Americans trust banks, according the latest (Jan. 26) Financial Trust Index by the Chicago Booth/Kellogg School. And many Americans would probably be eager to jump ship. Also on Jan. 26, Javelin Strategy and Research estimated that 5.6 million people have switched banks in the preceding three months. (Eleven percent were motivated by Occupy Wall Street's "Bank Transfer Day" campaign.)</p>
<p>The high level of trust in Apple hints that all the bruising reports and protests about labor practices in China haven't had such a bad effect. (Even most protesters&nbsp;<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/3775-labor-activists-deliver-demands-apple-store-york-city.html">admit to being Apple fans</a>.) In fact, Apple ranked as the most-trusted brand in a February report from polling firm Harris Interactive. (Google was just a bit behind.)</p>
<p>Any move into finance might still be tough. According to another Harris study from February, just a quarter of Americans would trust even using digital payments. But Apple often gets people to think different about how they use their money &mdash; for example, paying for music from <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/itunes">iTunes</a>, which launched in the glory days of pirated MP3s.</p>
<p>Speaking of iTunes, the service could give Apple a head start in banking. At least 200 million people already use the service. Would it be such a big step to go from an iTunes account to an iBank account?</p>
<p><em>This <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/4011-apple-bank-future-finance-survey.html">post</a> originally appeared at <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/">TechNewsDaily.&nbsp;</a></em></p><p><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/with-all-that-cash-maybe-apple-should-create-a-bank-2012-3#comments">Join the conversation about this story &#187;</a></p> http://www.businessinsider.com/13-of-cell-phone-users-fake-calls-to-avoid-people-2011-813% Of Cell Phone Users Fake Calls To Avoid Peoplehttp://www.businessinsider.com/13-of-cell-phone-users-fake-calls-to-avoid-people-2011-8
Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:44:05 -0400Samantha Murphy
<p><img style="float:right;" src="http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/4e4ab76c6bb3f7d05e000006/cell-phone-girls.jpg" border="0" alt="Cell Phone Girls" /></p><p>Ever pretend you're talking on the phone to avoid interacting with people around you? You&rsquo;re not alone.</p>
<p>About 13 percent of mobile<a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/cellphone-users-fake-calls-3135/#" class="itxtrst itxtrsta itxthook"><span class="itxtrst itxtrstspan itxthookspan" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent; font-size: inherit; font-weight: inherit; color: darkgreen;" id="itxthook1w0"></span></a> phone users are guilty of conducting fake conversations to get out of real conversations, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center&rsquo;s Internet &amp; American Life Project.</p>
<p>In a nationally representative telephone survey of nearly 2,300 American adults &mdash; with a margin of error of 2 percent &mdash; people confessed that they used their <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/top-10-reasons-to-ditch-your-dumb-phone-for-a-smartphone-0915/">mobile devices</a> as a way to show they don&rsquo;t want to be bothered.</p>
<p>The report found that American adults also rely on cellphones when they are bored, with about 42 percent turning to their devices for entertainment during downtime.</p>
<p>Text messaging and picture-taking continue to top the list of ways that Americans use mobile phones &mdash; three-quarters of all cell owners (73 percent) use their phones for each of these purposes. Other relatively common activities include <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/amazing-compact-digital-camera-photos-0848/">sending photos</a> or <a class="hidden_link" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/blackboard/">videos</a> to others (54 percent of cell owners do this), as well as accessing the Internet (44 percent).</p>
<p>Although 83 percent of American adults own some kind of cellphone, one-third of American adults (35 percent) <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/smartphone-growth-feature-phone-decline-3057/">own a smartphone</a>, the report noted.</p>
<p><em>This <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com/cellphone-users-fake-calls-3135/">post</a> originally appeared at <a href="http://www.technewsdaily.com">TechNewsDaily</a>.</em></p>
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